me hiding out, dodging him, not going to campus for classes, I thought maybe he’d moved on. So stupid.
“I was getting out of the shower and he was there standing in my bathroom. And I knew, it was going to be the worst, and it was. When he was done, I was on my bathroom floor in a puddle of my own blood. I couldn’t move I hurt so bad, everywhere hurt. I finally crawled to the vanity and got my phone. I called Jackie, her dad’s a doctor. She was the only person I could trust.”
Visions of Addy beaten and bloody tortured my brain, my hands itched to wrap them around Keith’s throat and choke the life out of him. But not before I did to him what he’d done to Adalynn.
Her flat, emotionless voice pulled me from my plotting and filled me with more outrage.
“Jackie came over, helped me get dressed, and took me to her parents’ house. I begged them not to call the police, not to take me to the hospital. I think Jackie’s dad was afraid I’d bolt so he agreed to look me over at his house.
“He took pictures,” she whispered. “So many pictures. I was like…it was like a movie…it wasn’t happening to me. How could something like that happen to me?” Addy’s body started trembling. My eyes drifted closed and I held her tighter. Thank fuck. A response. “I couldn’t understand how I let it happen.”
“You didn’t let anything happen.”
“I did. I should’ve left the very first time he touched me. I knew better. I trusted him. He promised he wouldn’t do it again. I ignored all the red flags. I saw them and ignored them. And now I have to live with it. My stupidity. I’m exactly what my family thinks I am, stupid and naïve.”
“Serious as fuck, stop calling yourself stupid. You are not that and you are not naïve. And not a single person in your family thinks that.”
“Jason—”
“Jason was acting like a dick, lashing out because his head was fucked up. Mercy was sick, he was having flashbacks about Kayla, and he took it out on you. It doesn’t make it right, but it’s the truth. You’re his favorite and you have to know that. He knows something went on with you and he knows he missed it. He feels guilty for that and he took that out on you, too. He fucked up and he knows it. Then and now. But the bottom line is, he doesn’t think you’re anything but what you are—smart and strong.”
“But—”
“Listen to me, Addy. I know weak. I’ve lived with it my whole life. I watched my mom take my dad’s shit since I can remember. Never protecting her boys or herself. Using me to hide behind so I’d get the brunt of my dad’s abuse. My brother learning to be like my dad as a tool to get himself clear. Now they both give my mom shit and she takes it. I will never understand why. She had the resources to leave him when I was a kid, and she certainly does now. I don’t know why she is the way she is and I’ve never asked, but I have offered to get her out and she was appalled I’d suggest such a thing. Making excuses for my dad, bullshitting herself into believing he loves her.
“Love does not hurt. Not fucking ever. And it sure as fuck doesn’t break you. She lives in denial—that’s weak, Adalynn. Not only did you get out, you did it on your own when in reality you had an army at your back.”
“I didn’t get myself out.”
“You damn well did.”
“No,” she denied. “Keith was tracking my phone and showed up at Jackie’s house. Her dad answered the door, showed Keith the pictures, and told him if he ever contacted me again they’d go public. Keith worked as a programmer on government contracts. He’d lose his security clearance if he had a police record. But in the end it didn’t matter—he lost it anyway.”
“How’d he lose it?”
The trembling turned into racking shakes, vicious jerky movements like she was trying to get out of her own skin.
“He killed someone,” she whispered, and my stomach started to tighten.
“What?”
“Ethan called me the next afternoon to tell me Keith had been arrested, vehicular manslaughter. He left Jackie’s, got drunk, and killed someone driving home.”
“That’s not your fault.”
Addy flinched and I realized in my haste, I’d shouted.